Week of 12-26-11: Rested to finish recovering from the illness, which took through about the 29th. On the 30th, I ran in the Across the Years 24 hour. Having only just over 2 weeks of decent training for this race, I didn't want to go in with too much expectations, especially since I'm just rebuilding my fitness right now. I ended up doing 63 miles, at which point I felt that I had done enough to be happy with the result. I had probably another 15-20 miles in my legs before things got really ugly, but I knew that I didn't have a full 100 miles in me. Hving already made more than 100km, I decided that somewhere between 75-85 wasn't really that much better than 63, considering that both would be shy of 100, so I figured that I would play it safe and just use this as another step in the build to be ready for a good 100 in the summer. This was 25 miles farther than anything else I did all at once in 2011, so I'm pretty happy with what I did, even if I know that I could've gotten in more miles. No running on Saturday or Sunday afterwards, just some fun New Year's Eve celebrations with Matt Taylor and his family in St George.
Week of 1-2-12: Took the first week back pretty easy, especially since my peroneus longus muscle (the portion through the outside bottom of the foot) in my right foot felt a bit strained. 31 miles for the week in 4 days of running, with the longest outing being 11 miles in Mill Creek with Adrian Shipley (Pipeline plus Mt Aire out and back). Also got in a couple hours of skiing at Snowbird, though the lack of snow will probably keep me from going back much until we get a legitimate storm.
Week of 1-9-12: Started the week with a moderate 12 mile run at a hair under 7:00/mile on Monday. Unfortunately, this proved to be a bit much for my still slightly sore foot and it made me relatively sore for a couple days afterwards. Took of Tues/Wed/Thurs to make sure that the foot would recover, then did just a 3 mile pickup test run on Friday (splits of 7:30, 7:20, 5:30). Foot didn't quite feel perfect, but it felt mostly better. Took Saturday off to make sure things would be OK, then did 3 hours, 35 minutes on Sunday. No idea what the length was, but it was certainly well shorter than a typical 3 1/2+ hour outing. Did the run with Jared Campbell, Ryan McDermitt, and Mark Lehmkuhle. Jared is training for Barkley and Ryan likes doing absurdly ridiculous routes, so we navigated what is considered to be one of the most difficult ridgelines in the entire Wasatch range. I don't know the exact name of the route we took, but it was the 2nd ridge to the right of Emigration Canyon (as looking towards the canyon from the city, ie the unbelievably jagged and steep one, as shown as the tallest ridge in this crappy picture, which does not accurately reflect the fact that the ridge is several thousand feet above the valley).
There was no trail for most of the route, the course was littered in massive boulders, the bushes were barkley-thick for most of the way:
, there were a lot of very very steep drops and climbs, the wind on the ridgeline was 50+ mph, and there were a number of outrageously tough portions where I had to use hands and knees to get around large obstacles (usually rocks right next to a huge cliff drop), so well over half of this "run" did not involve actual running. I'd give the run 7 miles, as even the very few runnable portions were incredibly steep and slow. So yeah, only 22 miles for the week, but my foot held up fine today and I feel totally ready to start hitting the training again.
